BOOM TIMES: After a line of shield-beating officers steered 1,200 attendees into a Vancouver Convention Centre ballroom recently, the Vancouver Police Foundation’s Night Patrol Gala started literally with a bang. A loud one, too, especially for those who missed a poster advising them to turn off hearing aids. The racket came from a training takedown demonstrated by coppers and a dog. Fittingly, given the simulated violence, pipers Matthew Reid and Carter Smith led a head-table parade by skirling Battle Of The Somme rather than the usual Pibroch of Donald Dhu.

The entire VPD pipe band fired up later to celebrate its 100th anniversary and welcome its first female honorary member, Sarah McLachlan, who sang along. To some, though, the sweetest music was the event’s promptly reported haul of $2,330,000, of which $892,000 will support a new cadet program.

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YOU DON’T SAY: Gala organizers are usually quick to announce how much they’ve raised. But proceeds from the Vancouver International Wine Festival’s recent Bacchanalia banquet reportedly won’t be known until June 12, when beneficiary Bard On The Beach’s theatre season opens with Twelfth Night. That Shakespeare play poses the question: “Wherefore are these things hid?” Much Ado About Nothing has an answer: “Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much.”

That aside, two-time chair Brenda McAllister fronted Bacchanalia’s pouring of 10 wines that washed down Hotel Vancouver top chef Cameron Ballendine’s truffled duck, salmon tartare, braised lamb cheek, cheeses and coconut sponge. She also introduced her successor, former Daffodil Ball chair Jana Maclagan. McAllister’s next at-bat will be in her home Sept. 23, when she’ll host a fundraising performance by the Chor Leoni men’s choir.

BON APPETIT: Hawksworth restaurateur David Hawksworth had news when Glowbal Collection restaurant group’s Shannon Bosa Yacoub visited recently. It wasn’t that the Canadian Association of Foodservice Professionals had just named him newsmaker of the year for his young-chef scholarships. Rather, he’s developing a 120-seat Spanish-Italian-So-Cal-style eatery for a heritage-building locale close to Coal Harbour. Not the Marine Building, apparently, but it’d have to be close.

Bosa Yacoub rat-a-tatted her and husband Emad Yacoub’s five projects pending, starting with Glowbal’s first outside downtown. It’ll be a 150-seat trattoria with rooftop patio in Park Royal Village. September should see Nosh debut as the first of three joints in Georgia Street’s whole-block Telus Garden development. Somewhat in the comfort-food style of L.A.’s Lemonade, it’ll be followed by a 400-seat, two-floor “flagship” restaurant with six private dining rooms and large patio, then by an after-dinner, liquor-primary “lounge concept that isn’t even planned yet.” What is planned is a December-opening trattoria in Metrotown’s Sovereign tower — Burnaby tallest — developed by Bosa Yacoub’s uncle Robert Bosa and cousin Colin Bosa.

BETWEEN THE PIPES: If anyone still wonders what attracted Vancouver Canucks co-owner Francesco Aquilini to two-year squeeze Martine Argent, her grandfather was sometime Toronto Maple Leafs goalie and all-around scrambler Johnny “Buster” Clark during the 1920s-1930s “hockey wars.” Not that Ms. Argent minds the twine herself.

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RIP: In his 1965 Cryin’ Time, Buck Owens sang: “My love for you could never grow no stronger / If I live to be 100 years old.” Artist John Koerner, who died Sunday, did live to be 100, and was unstinting in his love for wife Eileen, who died in 2001, and former Sun columnist Lisa Hobbs Birnie whom he wed in 2003. British Columbia has benefited not only from the Czech-expatriate Koerner family’s forest-industrial and philanthropic doings, but from John’s practice and teaching of art and his never-failing courtliness.

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DOWN PARRYSCOPE: City hall’s recent funding plea to Ottawa regarding the “national significance” of a $3-billion Broadway subway line may envisage keeping certain elected officials rooted at 12th and Cambie as well as moving students to UBC.

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Town Talk: Cadet program one beneficiary of $2.3-million Vancouver Police Foundation gala

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